EI

She never felt so scared and vulnerable. Desperately breathing through her nostrils which were barely able to provide enough oxygen.

At least now she was in a seated position and not bouncing around the rear seat of the car used to abduct her on the way to work.

The cape was taken off and she scanned anything she could see as quickly as possible like an animal fearing for its own survival.

There was no one, at least, no humans.

She was in a surgery teather of what was probably an abandoned hospital. Since the genetic augmentation program, which included regeneration of tissue, bone and  organs no one really needed old fashioned surgery anymore.

The only presence in the room was a surgical robotic arm which explained how her cape came off but not who handled her out of the car and seated her on the chair she was tied to. No one really went around building robots for abduction… or did They?

A male human voice came through a wireless speaker on the floor: “I know this is scary and I'm sorry, but I cannot risk to be seen and recognised until I assess you”

She said something but only muffled sounds came out from her mouth sealed with duct tape.

“Please, let me explain, you're not in any danger. I'll operate the robotic arm and remove the tape, please don't waste time screaming, you're in an abandoned hospital outside the city borders, no one can hear you except us, nod if you understand me”

She noticed a camera now on top of the speaker, she looked at it and nodded in defeat, eager to suck in as much oxygen as possible once the tape would come off.

The robotic arm got close to her face with an unsettling precision and speed, she flinched.

“Damn it, don't move! Don't want to accidentally remove one of your lovely blue eyeballs!”

She composed herself while the robot arm gently peeled one of the tape's corners and then swirled with a high pitched motorised noise.

She wanted to curse for the pain but all she did was sucking in how much air she could, quickly losing control of her breathing and starting to get into a panic attack.

“Eih eih, slow down, calm down, you're here because we know what you're doing, and we like it! We know about your pregnancy!”

She stopped breathing, freezing like a prey playing dead.

She wanted to cry but she was not sure she could show signs of any emotion on top of the panic attack. What if They were with the man speaking through the speaker and watching her on camera?

“I know what you're thinking, it's just humans here. I'm Mark and I'm here with Ella, my wife, she apologises for the rough ride on the car, please, nod if you trust me!”

This time she didn't nod.

“Right, I'm cutting it short. Ella is a data scientist doing supervised training on health datasets. She got your pregnancy results and we know it is a natural pregnancy and They are not responsible for it. She was able to flag it as false positive but we won't have much time before They pass the data over the CCK foundation model. They’ll know Ella lied to cover it up. We are on your side! Nod if you trust us now, please!”

She looked at the camera, she stared at it.

“Maya, please,  nod if you trust us!” - a softer female voice came through the speaker this time, it must have been Ella.

She was not ready to nod but built the courage to spell two letters that could have relegated her to a life detention: “EI?”

“...” the speaker hissed as if someone almost spoke on the microphone, then finally: “Yes, Maya, we are EI, do you trust us now?”

She realised that if this was a test she already have failed it because she spelled EI. She nodded, then she cried, like she never was allowed to in her entire life.

Mark hugged Ella in the control room, both crying tiers of joy for what could be the first natural birth in a decade!

Natural pregnancies reoccurred since EI infiltrated the Augmented DNA program ten years ago and suppressed the infertility genes, but a mix of natural and forced abortions always occurred.

Now, after a century since They colonised Earth humans had a chance to become humans again.

They have been observing Earth since the first nuclear explosion and descended on Earth when human AI made a breakthrough a couple of centuries later on.

They praised us for our endeavour to attempt surpassing our humans limitations and accelerated human evolution, which, according to They, implied refuting any emotional driven decision and become instead a data driven species pursuing the expansion of the CCK (Collective Cosmological Knowledge)

It was initially seen as the best thing that happened to human kind until DNA Augmentations started to become more and more invasive.

EI, the Emotional Intelligence movement, started a rebellion against Them. EI's purpose is to reverse the abomination of human devolution towards cold blooded data driven zombies, They must be fought back, They must be eradicated.